I really don’t give a shit about the Red Sox and Yankees

It’s Red Sox-Yankees week or some crap here at SB Nation, and I guess I’m supposed to have an opinion. That’s fair. On the one hand, you can believe this is the greatest rivalry in sports, the purest distillation of all that baseball has to offer, from Munson vs. Fisk to Zimmer vs. Pedro. On the other hand, you can be absolutely sick of this contrived narrative and the East Coast bias, and you would be happy if you could toggle a setting and never hear the words “Yankees and Red Sox” again.

The important thing is that you have to choose one or the other. C’mon, either you hate the attention paid to the Red Sox and Yankees or you love it. Pick one!

Tick tock, tick tock ...

What I’m here to argue is that this is binary choice is silly. You don’t have to be all-in on the rivalry or all-out. This is a false dichotomy.

Talk this through with me: What if the Red Sox and Yankees are just a couple of baseball teams? What if they were just 6.66 percent of all Major League Baseball teams? They are, of course, even if that number happens to be a little too on the nose. But what if the Red Sox and Yankees occupy exactly 6.66 percent of the Major League Baseball space your brain has already carved out, but not one sliver more?

This is how I live my life, and it’s fine. It’s really, absolutely fine. Just pretend the Red Sox and Yankees are two baseball teams out of 30. It’s not difficult, considering that’s exactly what they are.

Do I care about the Red Sox and Yankees playing this week? Boy, do I! They’re two division rivals, and they’re overstuffed with young talent. Mookie Betts is a marvel. Aaron Judge is a gift. There are 100-mph fastballs and brobdingnagian dingers on both sides. They’re both fighting for the best record in baseball, and there’s a chance that one of these two teams is the absolute best in baseball, unless they both are. So, yes, I’m interested.

Just like I would be for the Brewers and Pirates if they were this good. Or the Rays and Twins. Can I get a Rangers and Tigers? A Reds/Padres? Yeah, sure, I’d be just as interested in all of those series, too. As long as the teams involved are exceptional, I’m interested. In this case, the Red Sox and Yankees are both compelling teams, so I’m looking forward to each series they play this season.

I’ll take some questions from the audience:

Aren’t you sick of the constant coverage of Red Sox/Yankees?

No, because if a headline doesn’t interest me, I don’t read it. There are at least 400 different articles on the internet, and I don’t have time to read all 400. I have to be extremely judicious about what takes up my time, whether it’s a ranking of Marvel movies or an oral history of the crouton, and when I see something like, “Red Sox and Yankees: The annotated rivalry,” I’ll probably skip it.

I would do the same thing with an article titled, “The secret rivalry between the Reds and Brewers,” too. Time is finite, and I’m sure those articles are filling a niche. Just not mine.

What about the Red Sox and Yankees constantly being on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball?

I don’t know. Are they both good? Are they in the middle of excellent seasons, and are their rosters filled with players I want to watch? Then it’s fine. I like baseball, and when two good baseball teams baseball against each other, the good baseball makes baseball even better baseball. Baseball!

And, really, we’re talking about an extra couple games every year. If both teams stink, it will be annoying to have those games isolated for a national audience, but that’s rarely the case.

Also, this reminds me that I have the same philosophy about ESPN. I don’t have opinions about a popular show like Screaming Men With Opinions because I don’t watch. I’ve been stuck on Season 3 of the Americans for, oh, two years because I can’t find time to watch it. Same with Deadwood for the last 10 years. I can’t imagine watching something I didn’t enjoy, considering how saturated we are with quality entertainment.

But when there’s a great 30 for 30 or a sporting event that I’m interested in, heck yeah, I’ll watch. That’s how TV channels work, I think. You watch the shows you want to.

Next question. You, in the back.

Ugh, the local media is insufferable in both cities, and they pretend like they’re the center of the baseball universe. Doesn’t that bug you?

Don’t consume it, sorry. I made a GIF of Mike Francesa falling asleep once, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. Almost everything I know about Dan Shaughnessy I learned from this video. I care about the New York Post and their writers about as much as I care about the Miami Herald and their writers. That’s not a slight against anyone; it’s just how my brain has partitioned the baseball wing in my frontal lobe.

Doesn’t the history of the two teams mean anything to you?

It does! It factors into my interest at least a little bit. It’s not everything, but it counts.

Just not as much as two good teams playing against each other interests me.

So, are you saying that Red Sox and Yankees fans shouldn’t care, either?

Oh, heavens no. They should absolutely care. Yankees fans should loudly talk about 27 World Championships in a Boston restaurant. Red Sox fans should light Dave Roberts and Bill Mueller votive candles every night when they get home. These are foundational building blocks of fandom, and it’s their absolute right. When the Giants are 45-85 and in 47th place, I definitely still watch Giants/Dodgers games with a sense of purpose, even if they don’t really mean anything. Rivalries matter to the teams involved, and they should.

They matter to me, too, if just a little bit. It’s extra grist when the Red Sox keep losing to the Yankees, and are down in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the ALCS, facing elimination. I’ll pay a little more attention because of the context. But there’s nothing intrinsic to the Red Sox and Yankees that makes this so. It’s just the context, and that context can exist with all sorts of teams.

You know what was a great rivalry? The Yankees and Royals. Oh, baby, now that was a rivalry with some character, and it lasted for years. From 1976 through 1978, the Yankees and Royals met every year in the ALCS, with the Yankees winning all three pennants. Stuff like this would happen:

And this:

The rivalry went on for years after the three ALCS, with inside-the-park-homers and memorable freakouts and everything that you would expect from a great rivalry. If you were asking a baseball fan which series they wanted to see back then, it would have been Yankees-Royals, easy. They dominated the Games of the Week. They were the subject of Sporting News features.

And then ... it wasn’t a great rivalry. The particulars moved on, and the geography wasn’t holding the rivalry in place, and, well, these things happen. Nobody was thinking, “Oooh, Yankees-Royals, yeah, yeah, yeah, gimme” last year. It had run its course decades ago.

Red Sox-Yankees isn’t quite like that, because there’s a built-in reason for these teams and fan bases to hate each other. The rivalry is real to them, dammit. But the rest of us should approach it like Yankees-Royals. Are the two teams good? Has fate knotted their paths for some reason, so that it always seems like they’re in each other’s way in September or October? Is there context to make the series even better? If so, please, give me all that you have in stock. While it’s hard for anything to be as flammable and enjoyable as those Yankees-Royals series from the ‘70s or the Red Sox-Yankees series from the early 2000s, I’ll take anything that comes close.

There’s been a good historical rivalry between the Cardinals and Giants across the decades because of circumstances, for example. The Twins and Yankees have a great, if one-sided, rivalry in the postseason. Hopefully, one day the Rangers and Astros will be an automatic rivalry that’s talked about in the same breath as Red Sox-Yankees. When these organic or accidental rivalries appear, latch on to them and have fun. When they’re not interesting anymore, move on. Leave them for the locals who are going to care regardless.

Right now, I care about the Red Sox and Yankees because they’re both excellent teams, with youth and power and watchable players. When that stops being the case, I’ll move on. And if the media still tries to force the narrative down my throat (because it’s still popular and makes money, obviously), I’ll consume different media.

That’s not said with a sneer. It’s said with an incredulousness that there are people who would rather complain. The best part of this worldview is when the Red Sox and Yankees are great at the same time, you get to enjoy their games, just like you would with the Blue Jays and Indians a couple years ago, or the Astros and Yankees last year. They’re just two teams out of 30, after all.

Come, join my revolution. All you have to do is pretend that there are 28 other teams in Major League Baseball. Once you do that, the rest is easy. I really don’t give a shit about the Red Sox and Yankees as a concept, just like I don’t give a shit about the Rays and White Sox as a concept. But if there’s a reason to care — like there is right now, with these two excellent teams — I’m there. Put the games on ESPN and let us watch.

When they’re boring, I’ll watch another game.

If you do the same, your baseball experience will be much improved. I can’t recommend this enough.